Does God Make Mistakes?

SkepticThinker said:

Nonsense.
God is God.
Love is love.

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Well you answered to zero of my last points and are just repeating beliefs in an ancient myth.
But that God is NOT love. For one he sends flawed humans to eternal hell.
Also he simply isn't love? You are plain wrong.
He killed millions of humans for a census, for behaving badly, he advises taking women and children as plunder of war and killing every living thing in 6 cities because they might "corrupt the Israelites with their ways?"
An actual God could demonstrate his power and convert any nation. Or a killer could just kill them, not himself though, he uses his subjects for disgusting murder or women and babies??? LOVE????? WHAT???

Exodus 15:3:

Yahweh is a man of war;

Yahweh is his name.

Isaiah 42:13:

Yahweh goes forth like a mighty man;

like a man of war(s) he stirs up his fury.

Zephaniah 3:17: Yahweh, your God, is in your midst,

a warrior who gives victory.

Psalm 24:8:

Who is the King of Glory?

Yahweh, strong and mighty;

Yahweh, mighty in battle.

SkepticThinker said:

joelr God is love..... You are quick to point fingers!!! God does not kill it is those people who freely choose to sin!
God did not kill Adam! Adam was removed from the Garden because he did not have love! Only those who love can enter Paradise! Adam died because he lost access to the "Tree of Life"! It was all Adams own doing that got him killed!
22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever.”

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Yeah so if your children sin is it cool to kill them? Is it ok to end the life of someone for freedom of religion? 6 cities were ordered to be killed, including women and children and babies. For being in the wrong religion.

Adam was removed from the garden because that was a popular story used in religions way before the Hebrew people used it.

Relationship to the Bible

Various themes, plot elements, and characters in the Hebrew Bible correlate with the Epic of Gilgamesh – notably, the accounts of the Garden of Eden, the advice from Ecclesiastes, and the Genesis flood narrative.

Garden of Eden

The parallels between the stories of Enkidu/Shamhat and Adam/Eve have been long recognized by scholars.[64][65] In both, a man is created from the soil by a god, and lives in a natural setting amongst the animals. He is introduced to a woman who tempts him. In both stories the man accepts food from the woman, covers his nakedness, and must leave his former realm, unable to return. The presence of a snake that steals a plant of immortality from the hero later in the epic is another point of similarity. However, a major difference between the two stories is that while Enkidu experiences regret regarding his seduction away from nature, this is only temporary: After being confronted by the god Shamash for being ungrateful, Enkidu recants and decides to give the woman who seduced him his final blessing before he dies. This is in contrast to Adam, whose fall from grace is largely portrayed purely as a punishment for disobeying God.

Advice from Ecclesiastes

Several scholars suggest direct borrowing of Siduri's advice by the author of Ecclesiastes.[66]

A rare proverb about the strength of a triple-stranded rope, "a triple-stranded rope is not easily broken", is common to both books.[citation needed]

Noah's flood

Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.[67] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.[68] In a 2001 Torah commentary released on behalf of the Conservative Movement of Judaism, rabbinic scholar Robert Wexler stated: "The most likely assumption we can make is that both Genesis and Gilgamesh drew their material from a common tradition about the flood that existed in Mesopotamia. These stories then diverged in the retelling."[69] Ziusudra, Utnapishtim and Noah are the respective heroes of the Sumerian, Akkadian and biblical flood legends of the ancient Near East.

Additional biblical parallels

Matthias Henze suggests that Nebuchadnezzar's madness in the biblical Book of Daniel draws on the Epic of Gilgamesh. He claims that the author uses elements from the description of Enkidu to paint a sarcastic and mocking portrait of the king of Babylon.[70]

Many characters in the Epic have mythical biblical parallels, most notably Ninti, the Sumerian goddess of life, was created from Enki's rib to heal him after he had eaten forbidden flowers. It is suggested that this story served as the basis for the story of Eve created from Adam's rib in the Book of Genesis.[71] Esther J. Hamori, in Echoes of Gilgamesh in the Jacob Story, also claims that the myth of Jacob and Esau is paralleled with the wrestling match between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.[72]

SkepticThinker said:

God did not kill Adam! Adam was removed from the Garden because he did not have love!

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I didn't say he killed Adam. Adam is from a fictional story. It's all fiction but the God is not nice. Not love. Love forgives. It doesn't say, all those people in 6 entire cities are in a different religion. So kill them all, even the babies, cattle and all life.
If you say God is love (which makes no sense because love is a human emotion) then you are talking about a different God than this one.

Dogknox20 said:

.
rational experiences It's very simple... The first perfect man sinned... He made a free will choice to "Sin" thus he died!
Only God is perfect... God died "Sinless" he rose from the dead because "The wage of sin is death" All who trust in the resurrection will also rise!

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Savior demigods are a myth the Jewish writers took from the Greeks.


Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
• They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
• They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
• They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
• They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
• They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
• They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
• They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
• They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
• They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
• They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
• And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).

You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
• They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
• They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
• That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
• By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
• Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
• They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
• Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

This is sounding even more like Christianity, isn’t it? Odd that. Just mix in the culturally distinct features of Judaism that it was syncretized with, such as messianism, apocalypticism, scripturalism, and the particularly Jewish ideas about resurrection—as well as Jewish soteriology, cosmology, and rituals, and other things peculiar to Judaism, such as an abhorrence of sexuality and an obsession with blood atonement and substitutionary sacrifice—and you literally have Christianity fully spelled out. Before it even existed.

You can find all the evidence and scholarship establishing these facts in Elements 11 and 31 of my book On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 96-108; 168-73). This “common package” was indeed simply “syncretized” with Jewish elements, ideas, requirements, and sensitivities (e.g. Element 17, ibid., pp. 141-43). The mytheme was simply Judaized. And thence Christianity was born. The “differences” are the Jewish element. The similarities are what were adopted from the widespread mythemes raging with popularity everywhere around them.

Muffled said:

I believe since the evidence is that which comes from the mind that it is not material nor scientific.

I believe no-one can read someone's mind. The evidence we have is in their words. No doubt humans are capable of thinking erroneous things. How does one prove if something is a construct or not. Jesus says it is by the fruit ie results. If a person receives Jesus as Lord and Savior and stops committing crimes then that is proof that Jesus saves people. Since Jesus also claims to be God in the flesh, He is proof of a living God.

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OK I'll try to answer.

The first sentence: I assume you mean the evidence for your religious beliefs. Whether or not the mind is material, I disagree that thoughts are not subject to scientific investigation. We can investigate the claims that are made based on those thoughts. If we don't do that, we are open to believing anything that comes out of someone's mouth. I assume you don't agree that the Earth is flat? many people do believe that and say so with great confidence.

Last paragraph: That seems to be what I was saying, but I would substitute "evidence" for "proof". I'll take one example. If someone "receives Jesus" and mends his ways, that is evidence of something connected to his conversion. It doesn't prove anything. For example, his better behavior might be due to the company he now keeps, or that he now tries harder because he thinks he is being judged. Please don't think I disrespect the changes that can occur after a religious conversion. I've experienced it in myself (long story). It's just that we need to be careful about jumping to conclusions on limited evidence.

Dogknox20 said:

Alien826 I agree... To someone who rejects the scriptures it would be folly to use the bible... BUT...

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It is, as I tried to explain, not in quoting the Bible but in the unspoken assumption that once a Bible verse is quoted it settles all arguments. A believer may accept that, but it cuts very little ice with non-believers.

Alien826 but the question posed is "Does God make mistakes"?! The topic is about "God" thus the only other way there can be is to use logic and it says, "God is perfect" otherwise God would not be God!! Example: Satan is not God all know he is not perfect! God MUST be perfect so logic says: God cannot make mistakes!

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That's a reasonable response. According to your premises, IF God is perfect he doesn't make mistakes. I can't argue with that. The intent of the OP though was to point out that certain passages in the Bible strongly suggest that he did make mistakes, as in creating humans that he had to destroy later. You task, as apologist, is to show (if you can) why it wasn't really a mistake, and also to deal with the implications of your answer.

joelr said:

Savior demigods are a myth the Jewish writers took from the Greeks.


Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
• They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
• They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
• They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
• They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
• They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
• They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
• They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
• They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
• They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
• They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
• And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).

You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
• They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
• They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
• That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
• By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
• Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
• They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
• Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

This is sounding even more like Christianity, isn’t it? Odd that. Just mix in the culturally distinct features of Judaism that it was syncretized with, such as messianism, apocalypticism, scripturalism, and the particularly Jewish ideas about resurrection—as well as Jewish soteriology, cosmology, and rituals, and other things peculiar to Judaism, such as an abhorrence of sexuality and an obsession with blood atonement and substitutionary sacrifice—and you literally have Christianity fully spelled out. Before it even existed.

You can find all the evidence and scholarship establishing these facts in Elements 11 and 31 of my book On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 96-108; 168-73). This “common package” was indeed simply “syncretized” with Jewish elements, ideas, requirements, and sensitivities (e.g. Element 17, ibid., pp. 141-43). The mytheme was simply Judaized. And thence Christianity was born. The “differences” are the Jewish element. The similarities are what were adopted from the widespread mythemes raging with popularity everywhere around them.

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joelr all you have is opinion.

Fact: Christians believe God became man! Not opinion!
Christians believe; our God loves us FACT Our God sacrificed himself for us! Until Jesus became man, we made sacrifice to God, now through Jesus God sacrificed himself for us!

The Christian God is not going away nonmatter how much you want him to go. Fact: Man has always believed in a god, but the Christian God lowered himself to take on flesh no other god has done this! Jesus let go of his divinity, his body and soul all just for us to redeem man from death! From the cross he destroyed death and restored life!

Alien826 said:

It is, as I tried to explain, not in quoting the Bible but in the unspoken assumption that once a Bible verse is quoted it settles all arguments. A believer may accept that, but it cuts very little ice with non-believers.



That's a reasonable response. According to your premises, IF God is perfect he doesn't make mistakes. I can't argue with that. The intent of the OP though was to point out that certain passages in the Bible strongly suggest that he did make mistakes, as in creating humans that he had to destroy later. You task, as apologist, is to show (if you can) why it wasn't really a mistake, and also to deal with the implications of your answer.

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.
Alien826 Scriptures prove it is not just me defending the position they prove you or any non-believer is in the minority. Fact: Man has always believed in a god of some sort!

Scriptures PROVE the Christian, Muslem, Jewish etc. position; like it or not! If you post a paper from a non-believer, should I cry foul, your paper does not cut ice!!!?!
Yes, there are passages that seem to oppose one another but reading the scriptures completely we see they are a teaching tool! Example God was angry with the people of Moses because they worshipped a golden calf Moses talked God out of him destroying them... Did God make a mistake? NO God knows everything, he knew Moses would defend them, he knew they would rebel against Moses in the desert, they would cry to Moses about no food, that they would be killed by snakes etc! Moving it further along Jesus is a type of Moses; Jesus saves us by the waters of Baptism like Moses saved the people by the water of the Red Sea! Jesus is a living Manna (Eucharist) the confessional saves us because the Church holds up Jesus' much like Moses held up the bronze serpent in the desert to save his people! Another example: Moses followed a pillar of fire for direction, we follow the direction of the Holy Church Fire landed on the Church at Pentecost!
Did I post scripture? NO! I gave you a Christian answer to prove: God is Perfect he does NOT make mistakes!

joelr said:

Do you do everything a book tells you? Yes scripture says Jesus is a demigod.
...

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All righteous people are children of God, does it mean they are also demigods?

...He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. To this end the Son of God was revealed, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever is born of God doesn't commit sin, because his seed remains in him; and he can't sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn't do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn't love his brother.
1 John 3:7-10

But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God's children, to those who believe in his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-13

Dogknox20 said:

.
Alien826 Scriptures prove it is not just me defending the position they prove you or any non-believer is in the minority. Fact: Man has always believed in a god of some sort!

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Actually, you don't need scriptures to prove that, over history, non-believers are in the minority. Simple history will do. Actually I doubt that scriptures say much about how many people believe in what they say, do they? Typically, they just .. say it. That doesn't say much about the truth or otherwise of the scriptures. Humans have believed a multitude of things that have later been shown to be false. (And that doesn't make the scriptures false either).

Scriptures PROVE the Christian, Muslem, Jewish etc. position; like it or not! If you post a paper from a non-believer, should I cry foul, your paper does not cut ice!!!?!

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I don't know if we are differing over a word ("prove"). In any case, no piece of paper with writing on it proves anything. The proof comes from determining how close the statements on the paper come to reality. That applies to believers and non-believers alike. If a non-believer
claims that something is true simply because of something that is written, then yes, cry foul. You will find that I support you totally.

Yes, there are passages that seem to oppose one another but reading the scriptures completely we see they are a teaching tool! Example God was angry with the people of Moses because they worshipped a golden calf Moses talked God out of him destroying them... Did God make a mistake? NO God knows everything, he knew Moses would defend them, he knew they would rebel against Moses in the desert, they would cry to Moses about no food, that they would be killed by snakes etc! Moving it further along Jesus is a type of Moses; Jesus saves us by the waters of Baptism like Moses saved the people by the water of the Red Sea! Jesus is a living Manna (Eucharist) the confessional saves us because the Church holds up Jesus' much like Moses held up the bronze serpent in the desert to save his people! Another example: Moses followed a pillar of fire for direction, we follow the direction of the Holy Church Fire landed on the Church at Pentecost!
Did I post scripture? NO! I gave you a Christian answer to prove: God is Perfect he does NOT make mistakes!

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You just told me what scripture says in your own words. In any case, no evidence (actually, little evidence, scripture gives some evidence) is offered. You just give an interpretation. Actually that's fine, in the context of this thread. You are offering possibilities which, if true, would show the OP to be false. That's great. This is much better than just posting verses and leaving the audience to work out the conclusions.

joelr said:

Well you answered to zero of my last points and are just repeating beliefs in an ancient myth.
But that God is NOT love. For one he sends flawed humans to eternal hell.
Also he simply isn't love? You are plain wrong.
He killed millions of humans for a census, for behaving badly, he advises taking women and children as plunder of war and killing every living thing in 6 cities because they might "corrupt the Israelites with their ways?"
An actual God could demonstrate his power and convert any nation. Or a killer could just kill them, not himself though, he uses his subjects for disgusting murder or women and babies??? LOVE????? WHAT???

Exodus 15:3:

Yahweh is a man of war;

Yahweh is his name.

Isaiah 42:13:

Yahweh goes forth like a mighty man;

like a man of war(s) he stirs up his fury.

Zephaniah 3:17: Yahweh, your God, is in your midst,

a warrior who gives victory.

Psalm 24:8:

Who is the King of Glory?

Yahweh, strong and mighty;

Yahweh, mighty in battle.




Yeah so if your children sin is it cool to kill them? Is it ok to end the life of someone for freedom of religion? 6 cities were ordered to be killed, including women and children and babies. For being in the wrong religion.

Adam was removed from the garden because that was a popular story used in religions way before the Hebrew people used it.

Relationship to the Bible

Various themes, plot elements, and characters in the Hebrew Bible correlate with the Epic of Gilgamesh – notably, the accounts of the Garden of Eden, the advice from Ecclesiastes, and the Genesis flood narrative.

Garden of Eden

The parallels between the stories of Enkidu/Shamhat and Adam/Eve have been long recognized by scholars.[64][65] In both, a man is created from the soil by a god, and lives in a natural setting amongst the animals. He is introduced to a woman who tempts him. In both stories the man accepts food from the woman, covers his nakedness, and must leave his former realm, unable to return. The presence of a snake that steals a plant of immortality from the hero later in the epic is another point of similarity. However, a major difference between the two stories is that while Enkidu experiences regret regarding his seduction away from nature, this is only temporary: After being confronted by the god Shamash for being ungrateful, Enkidu recants and decides to give the woman who seduced him his final blessing before he dies. This is in contrast to Adam, whose fall from grace is largely portrayed purely as a punishment for disobeying God.

Advice from Ecclesiastes

Several scholars suggest direct borrowing of Siduri's advice by the author of Ecclesiastes.[66]

A rare proverb about the strength of a triple-stranded rope, "a triple-stranded rope is not easily broken", is common to both books.[citation needed]

Noah's flood

Andrew George submits that the Genesis flood narrative matches that in Gilgamesh so closely that "few doubt" that it derives from a Mesopotamian account.[67] What is particularly noticeable is the way the Genesis flood story follows the Gilgamesh flood tale "point by point and in the same order", even when the story permits other alternatives.[68] In a 2001 Torah commentary released on behalf of the Conservative Movement of Judaism, rabbinic scholar Robert Wexler stated: "The most likely assumption we can make is that both Genesis and Gilgamesh drew their material from a common tradition about the flood that existed in Mesopotamia. These stories then diverged in the retelling."[69] Ziusudra, Utnapishtim and Noah are the respective heroes of the Sumerian, Akkadian and biblical flood legends of the ancient Near East.

Additional biblical parallels

Matthias Henze suggests that Nebuchadnezzar's madness in the biblical Book of Daniel draws on the Epic of Gilgamesh. He claims that the author uses elements from the description of Enkidu to paint a sarcastic and mocking portrait of the king of Babylon.[70]

Many characters in the Epic have mythical biblical parallels, most notably Ninti, the Sumerian goddess of life, was created from Enki's rib to heal him after he had eaten forbidden flowers. It is suggested that this story served as the basis for the story of Eve created from Adam's rib in the Book of Genesis.[71] Esther J. Hamori, in Echoes of Gilgamesh in the Jacob Story, also claims that the myth of Jacob and Esau is paralleled with the wrestling match between Gilgamesh and Enkidu.[72]







I didn't say he killed Adam. Adam is from a fictional story. It's all fiction but the God is not nice. Not love. Love forgives. It doesn't say, all those people in 6 entire cities are in a different religion. So kill them all, even the babies, cattle and all life.
If you say God is love (which makes no sense because love is a human emotion) then you are talking about a different God than this one.

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The only words that you've quoted here that are mine are these:
Nonsense.
God is God.
Love is love.

Dogknox20 said:

joelr all you have is opinion.

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All you've got is blind faith and repetitive mantras.

Dogknox20 said:

Fact: Christians believe God became man! Not opinion!
Christians believe; our God loves us FACT Our God sacrificed himself for us! Until Jesus became man, we made sacrifice to God, now through Jesus God sacrificed himself for us!

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It may be a fact that Christians believe that, but that doesn't make it a fact.

Dogknox20 said:

The Christian God is not going away nonmatter how much you want him to go. Fact: Man has always believed in a god, but the Christian God lowered himself to take on flesh no other god has done this! Jesus let go of his divinity, his body and soul all just for us to redeem man from death! From the cross he destroyed death and restored life!

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These are not facts. They are claims.

Dogknox20 said:

joelr all you have is opinion.

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Actually I quoted a historical scholar who specializes in the NT period. It is a fact that dying/rising demigods who provide salvation by getting followers into an afterlife, pre-date Jesus.
So when you call that opinion you are literally telling a lie. You are also debating dishonestly, a different type of lie.

Dogknox20 said:

Fact: Christians believe God became man! Not opinion!

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Yes it's a fact that SOME Christians believe this. A billion Muslims also disagree and millions of Jews disagree. The fact is a story kind of says this (not really). One of the leading theologians (actual believer) on John doesn't really agree that Jesus was called God.
Raymond E. Brown - Wikipedia
Raymond Edward Brown SS (May 22, 1928 – August 8, 1998) was an American Sulpician priest and prominent biblical scholar. He was regarded as a specialist concerning the hypothetical "Johannine community", which he speculated contributed to the authorship of the Gospel of John, and he also wrote influential studies on the birth and death of Jesus. Brown was professor emeritus at Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York where he taught for 29 years. He was the first Catholic professor to gain tenure there, where he earned a reputation as a superior lecturer.[1]

In a detailed 1965 article in the journal Theological Studies examining whether Jesus was ever called "God" in the New Testament, Brown concluded that "Even the fourth Gospel never portrays Jesus as saying specifically that he is God" and "there is no reason to think that Jesus was called God in the earliest layers of New Testament tradition." He argued that "Gradually, in the development of Christian thought God was understood to be a broader term. It was seen that God had revealed so much of Himself in Jesus that God had to be able to include both Father and Son."[10]

Either way, it's in a religious myth. Doesn't make it real at all.

Dogknox20 said:

Christians believe; our God loves us FACT Our God sacrificed himself for us! Until Jesus became man, we made sacrifice to God, now through Jesus God sacrificed himself for us!

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No, Jesus came back to life. That isn't a sacrifice. If your wife or children didn't love you would you send her to eternal torture? No. Eternal torture for non-belief isn't love at all.
Especially when it looks exactly like a mythology.
The historical consensus is that the gospel narratives are a myth. So it isn't real anyways.

Dogknox20 said:

The Christian God is not going away nonmatter how much you want him to go. Fact: Man has always believed in a god, but the Christian God lowered himself to take on flesh no other god has done this! Jesus let go of his divinity, his body and soul all just for us to redeem man from death! From the cross he destroyed death and restored life!

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Actually if you read the article I linked to many sons/daughters of other gods died for followers. That is an older myth from Hellenism that Mark wrote into Christianity.
Even if they were the first, it's no more real than the Quran or stories about Krishna. Yahweh is exactly like all other gods for thousands of years before him. But even if he was new, it's still fiction.

Many demigods before Jesus destroyed death by undergoing a passion and resurrecting and relaying the benefit onto followers. Nothing new there. They are all just stories. That one stuck. Doesn't make it real?

PhD David Litwas latest work Iesus Deus is on the Greek origin of the Jesus story -

Adela Yarbro Collins: “This book is of interest to a wide readership. It will help historical critics understand what “divinity” meant in the ancient world. It will also help theologians understand the origins of Christology. I recommend it to students, scholars, and any reader curious about Jesus.”

Stanley Stowers: “M. David Litwa’s Iesus Deus marks a major breakthrough in scholarship on early Christianity. The book manages to overcome the scholarly apologetic segregation of early Christian beliefs about Jesus Christ from Greek and Roman dominated Mediterranean culture and to demonstrate the fit of these beliefs in that Hellenistic context. A great deal of writing about the ‘purely Jewish’ Christ crumbles with this book.”

David Aune: “In Iesus Deus, M. David Litwa surveys six of the more significant ways in which early Christians from the first through the third centuries CE drew on common reservoir of ancient Mediterranean conceptions of deity as models for expressing the ultimate significance of Jesus, namely his divine origin and deity. These six themes include divine conception (focusing on Luke 1), punitive protection of honor (Jesus as the enfant terrible of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), superhuman moral benefaction (Origen’s argumentation in the Contra Celsum), epiphanic or theophanic manifestation (the Gospel transfiguration narratives), corporeal immortalization (the Gospel resurrection accounts), and the reception of a proper divine name (Phil 2:9-11 in the light of Roman imperial practice). This is an extraordinarily well-written, nuanced, convincingly argued and methodologically sophisticated comparative study which breaks new ground in understanding a centrally important aspect of the formation of early Christology. The author rightly criticizes the continued tendency to bifurcate “Judaism” and “Hellenism,” and in his use of comparative method rejects superficial conceptions of “borrowing” by appealing to the shared existence of an “embedded Hellenization” that pervaded ancient Mediterranean cultures. The author makes use of an impressive array of primary and secondary sources over which he has enviable control. This book gets four stars and should be required reading for all serious students of early Christian thought.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: The “Deification” of Jesus Christ

Chapter 1: “Not through Semen, Surely”: Luke and Plutarch on Divine Birth

Chapter 2: “From Where Was this Child Born?”: Divine Children and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas

Chapter 3: “Deus est iuvare”: Miracles, Morals, and Euergetism in Origen’s Contra Celsum

Chapter 4: “And he was Metamorphosed”: Transfiguration as Epiphany

Chapter 5: “We Worship One who Rose from His Tomb”: Resurrection and Deification



Chapter 6: “The Name Above Every Name”: Jesus and Greco-Roman Theonymy

1213 said:

All righteous people are children of God, does it mean they are also demigods?

...He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. To this end the Son of God was revealed, that he might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever is born of God doesn't commit sin, because his seed remains in him; and he can't sin, because he is born of God. In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn't do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn't love his brother.
1 John 3:7-10

But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God's children, to those who believe in his name: who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-13

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No demigods are when a sky-father, supreme God impregnates a mortal woman. Often it's a virgin birth as well.

Although the salvation and resurrecting savior is from Hellenism the first exposure to saviors came at the beginning of the 2nd Temple Period 500BCE when the Persians occupied Israel.
Their religion had long before prophecized about a coming messianic figure.

"
Belief in a world Saviour

An important theological development during the dark ages of 'the faith concerned the growth of beliefs about the Saoshyant or coming Saviour. Passages in the Gathas suggest that Zoroaster was filled with a sense that the end of the world was imminent, and that Ahura Mazda had entrusted him with revealed truth in order to rouse mankind for their vital part in the final struggle. Yet he must have realized that he would not himself live to see Frasho-kereti; and he seems to have taught that after him there would come 'the man who is better than a good man' (Y 43.3), the Saoshyant. The literal meaning of Saoshyant is 'one who will bring benefit' ; and it is he who will lead humanity in the last battle against evil.c and so there is no betrayal, in this development of belief in the Saoshyant, of Zoroaster's own teachings about the part which mankind has to play in the great cosmic struggle. The Saoshyant is thought of as being accompanied, like kings and heroes, by Khvarenah, and it is in Yasht r 9 that the extant Avesta has most to tell of him. Khvarenah, it is said there (vv. 89, 92, 93), 'will accompany the victorious Saoshyant ... so that he may restore 9 existence .... When Astvat-ereta comes out from the Lake K;tsaoya, messenger of Mazda Ahura ... then he will drive the Drug out from the world of Asha.' This glorious moment was longed for by the faithful, and the hope of it was to be their strength and comfort in times of adversity.

Just as belief in the coming Saviour developed its element of the miraculous, so, naturally, the person of the prophet himself came to be magnified as the centuries passed. Thus in the Younger Avesta, although never divinized, Zoroaster is exalted as 'the first priest, the first warrior, the first herdsman ... master and judge of the world' (Yt 13. 89, 9 1), one at whose birth 'the waters and plants ... and all the creatures of the Good Creation rejoiced' (Y t 13.99). Angra Mainyu, it is said, fled at that moment from the earth (Yt 17. 19); but he returned to tempt the prophet in vain, with a promise of earthly power, to abjure the faith of Ahura Mazda (Vd 19 .6
"

SkepticThinker said:

The only words that you've quoted here that are mine are these:
Nonsense.
God is God.
Love is love.

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Looks like a mistake, I was responding to a different post. Weird?

Dogknox20 said:

.
Alien826 Scriptures prove it is not just me defending the position they prove you or any non-believer is in the minority. Fact: Man has always believed in a god of some sort!

Scriptures PROVE the Christian, Muslem, Jewish etc. position; like it or not! If you post a paper from a non-believer, should I cry foul, your paper does not cut ice!!!?!
Yes, there are passages that seem to oppose one another but reading the scriptures completely we see they are a teaching tool! Example God was angry with the people of Moses because they worshipped a golden calf Moses talked God out of him destroying them... Did God make a mistake? NO God knows everything, he knew Moses would defend them, he knew they would rebel against Moses in the desert, they would cry to Moses about no food, that they would be killed by snakes etc! Moving it further along Jesus is a type of Moses; Jesus saves us by the waters of Baptism like Moses saved the people by the water of the Red Sea! Jesus is a living Manna (Eucharist) the confessional saves us because the Church holds up Jesus' much like Moses held up the bronze serpent in the desert to save his people! Another example: Moses followed a pillar of fire for direction, we follow the direction of the Holy Church Fire landed on the Church at Pentecost!
Did I post scripture? NO! I gave you a Christian answer to prove: God is Perfect he does NOT make mistakes!

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Belief in myth does not make something real. You don't get to source Islam as if it's in your corner. Their wildly contradictory beliefs demonstrate these beliefs are made up and not from any actual deity.

In fact in Islam God says you are wrong, liers and going to hell.
And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah, and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah. That is their saying with their mouths. They imitate the saying of those who disbelieved of old. Allah (Himself) fighteth against them. How perverse are they!

31 They have taken as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were bidden to worship only One God. There is no God save Him. Be He Glorified from all that they ascribe as partner (unto Him)!

32 Fain would they put out the light of Allah with their mouths, but Allah disdaineth (aught) save that He shall perfect His light, however much the disbelievers are averse.

He it is Who hath sent His messenger with the guidance and the Religion of Truth, that He may cause it to prevail over all religion, however much the idolaters may be averse.

Allah has sent his messenger (Muhammad) with the religion of truth. It (Islam) will prevail over all religion.

34 O ye who believe! Lo! many of the (Jewish) rabbis and the (Christian) monks devour the wealth of mankind wantonly and debar (men) from the way of Allah. They who hoard up gold and silver and spend it not in the way of Allah, unto them give tidings (O Muhammad) of a painful doom,

Give tidings (Muhammad) of a painful doom to the rich and greedy Christian monks and Jewish rabbis.

35 On the day when it will (all) be heated in the fire of hell, and their foreheads and their flanks and their backs will be branded therewith (and it will be said unto them): Here is that which ye hoarded for yourselves. Now taste of what ye used to hoard.

Dogknox20 said:

.
Okay how about this attempt to address "Does God make Mistakes"?!
Does God make mistakes... Answer is NO because God is Perfect!
To prove it.... God rose from the dead because ONLY God is perfect; A perfect God MUST be sinless!

A perfect God cannot make mistakes otherwise he would NOT be perfect! Satan wants man to believe God is not perfect!
Science claims to prove there is no God! BUT....

SkepticThinker but if this is so, how come Man has ALWAYS believed in God and always will!?! Man does not believe the world is flat because science has proven the world is round! If Science has proven there is no God how come man still believes in a God?!

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They don't. Europe is largely secular and secular people are growing in numbers. The only reason Christin numbers are so high is because the church is counting ex-members. A caller on the Atheist Experience actually commented that he left the church but they would not take his name off the members list.

Also man has no always believed in God the way you think. Gods were beings who were seperate from humans, no afterlife and they occasionally granted favors.
A common Roman gravestone saying was:
Non Fui, Fui, Non Sum, Non Curo

N.F.F.N.S.N.C.

I was not, I was, I am not, I care not.

Man has also always believed in:
giants
humans came from clay
dragons
axis mundi - a center of reality with magic properties
fire came from gods
dying gods

and many other mythical ideas.

Dogknox20 said:

.

Science proves there is a God... God is the designer creation cannot be by random chance!

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Really? Just full on lies? Science doesn't know the initial conditions of the big bang and cannot calculate and probabilities.
As far as abiogenesis, the beginning of life it could be 1 trillion to one.
But guess what, there are now believed to be more than 1 trilllion planets in the universe. So the odds work out that nature could easily create life by chance.

However we also know that organic compounds exist all over the universe. So the odds are not impossible and possibly likely.
Unconscious forces of nature absolutely could have created the universe and life. All science agrees with this position.

why is it that you need misleading and untruthful apologetics to prop up your ideas about God?

Dogknox20 said:

Hello Baroodi
There is an Anti-Christ! There is NOT an Anti-Buddha, Anti-Mohamad, Anti-Krishna etc
Christians are Christ followers!
Christians believe: Jesus is God... God became man to save man! Satan (Anti-Christ) is against Christians because he rejects truth, he rejects God; Satan rejects the message of Christians!

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Anti christ originally meant a group of people who didn't follow scripture:

"
The only one of the late 1st/early 2nd century Apostolic Fathers to use the term is Polycarp (c. 69 – c. 155) who warned the Philippians that everyone who preached false doctrine was an antichrist.[22] His use of the term Antichrist follows that of the New Testament in not identifying a single personal Antichrist, but a class of people.[23]
"

The fact that the word was developed later to mean something else still doesn't make any of it true? The antichrist later became associated with the second coming.
The second coming is taken from a Persian myth the Hebrews were exposed to during the occupation in 500 BCE. Many of the Persian myths were added to Christianity.

Satan is not the antichrist. Satan was an angel of Yahweh and works for him in the OT.
He talks to Yahweh, he does killing for Yahweh and is his agent. Not an anti-christ.

In 2 Samuel 24, Yahweh sends the "Angel of Yahweh" to inflict a plague against Israel for three days, killing 70,000 people as punishment for David having taken a census without his approval.[16] 1 Chronicles 21:1 repeats this story,[16] but replaces the "Angel of Yahweh" with an entity referred to as "a satan".[16]
Yahweh asks one of them, "the satan", where he has been, to which he replies that he has been roaming around the earth.[20] Yahweh asks, "Have you considered My servant Job?"[20] The satan replies by urging Yahweh to let him torture Job, promising that Job will abandon his faith at the first tribulation.[21] Yahweh consents; t

Satan became an enemy of God only after the Persian occupation where they already had that type of devil. This is just syncretic myth copying.
During the Second Temple Period, when Jews were living in the Achaemenid Empire, Judaism was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, the religion of the Achaemenids.[26][8][27] Jewish conceptions of Satan were impacted by Angra Mainyu,[8][28] the Zoroastrian god of evil, darkness, and ignoranc

Revelation 2nd coming is a Persian myth way before it was used in the NT.

Revelations


but Zoroaster taught that the blessed must wait for this culmination till Frashegird and the 'future body' (Pahlavi 'tan i pasen'), when the earth will give up the bones of the dead (Y 30.7). This general resurrection will be followed by the Last Judgment, which will divide all the righteous from the wicked, both those who have lived until that time and those who have been judged already. Then Airyaman, Yazata of friendship and healing, together with Atar, Fire, will melt all the metal in the mountains, and this will flow in a glowing river over the earth. All mankind must pass through this river, and, as it is said in a Pahlavi text, 'for him who is righteous it will seem like warm milk, and for him who is wicked, it will seem as if he is walking in the • flesh through molten metal' (GBd XXXIV. r 8-r 9). In this great apocalyptic vision Zoroaster perhaps fused, unconsciously, tales of volcanic eruptions and streams of burning lava with his own experience of Iranian ordeals by molten metal; and according to his stern original teaching, strict justice will prevail then, as at each individual j udgment on earth by a fiery ordeal. So at this last ordeal of all the wicked will suffer a second death, and will perish off the face of the earth. The Daevas and legions of darkness will already have been annihilated in a last great battle with the Yazatas; and the river of metal will flow down into hell, slaying Angra Mainyu and burning up the last vestige of wickedness in the universe.

Ahura Mazda and the six Amesha Spentas will then solemnize a lt, spiritual yasna, offering up the last sacrifice (after which death wW be no more), and making a preparation of the mystical 'white haoma', which will confer immortality on the resurrected bodies of all the blessed, who will partake of it. Thereafter men will beome like the Immortals themselves, of one thought, word and deed, unaging, free from sickness, without corruption, forever joyful in the kingdom of God upon earth. For it is in this familiar and beloved world, restored to its original perfection, that, according to Zoroaster, eternity will be passed in bliss, and not in a remote insubstantial Paradise. So the time of Separation is a renewal of the time of Creation, except that no return is prophesied to the original uniqueness of living things. Mountain and valley will give place once more to level plain; but whereas in the beginning there was one plant, one animal, one man, the rich variety and number that have since issued from these will remain forever. Similarly the many divinities who were brought into being by Ahura Mazda will continue to have their separate existences. There is no prophecy of their re-absorption into the Godhead. As a Pahlavi text puts it, after Frashegird 'Ohrmaid and the Amahraspands and all Yazads and men will be together. .. ; every place will resemble a garden in spring, in which

there are all kinds of trees and flowers ... and it will be entirely the creation of Ohrrnazd' (Pahl.Riv.Dd. XLVIII, 99, lOO, l07).

joelr said:

No demigods are when a sky-father, supreme God impregnates a mortal woman...

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Yet Bible says Jesus is a man, not a demigod.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
1 Timothy 2:5

joelr said:

Looks like a mistake, I was responding to a different post. Weird?

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A glitch in the matrix, perhaps?
No worries!

1213 said:

Yet Bible says Jesus is a man, not a demigod.

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
1 Timothy 2:5

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I don't understand why this is so hard for you? If a passage in Greek mythology called Herecules a man that doesn't make the fact that his father is Zeus and his mother is a mortal woman impregnated by supernatural means completely false. Jesus fits the same mythotype. It doesn't matter what the myth says? Myths don't call themselves myth and they don't always label the characters what they are in a larger academic context. Jesus is born of a God and a human mortal woman. That is what a demigod is. It isn't the only Greek element by a long shot.
Baptism, eucharist, the logos, a dying/rising savior providing salvation are also Greek inventions from the Hellenistic period.
Hellenistic Greeks occupied the Hebrew nation in 320 B.C.

Here are some other Greek inventions on salvation that were adopted by Christianity. Taken from:

Hellenistic Ideas of Salvation, Author(s): Paul Wendland

Source: The American Journal of Theology , Jul., 1913, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jul., 1913), pp. 345-351

Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: Hellenistic Ideas of Salvation in the Light of Ancient Anthropology on JSTOR

-The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures, hope of a life after death.


-The consciousness of estranecment between man and God, and a longing to bridge this chasm, are fundamental to all religions of redemption. In the development of antiquity from the sixth century B.c. on, this type of thought, for which the way is already pared in the older elements of popular faith, confronts us a definite and vigorously increasing religious movement. Reformers, prophets, and puritans propagate a profounder piety, which often mystic in character. The ecstatic Dionysus religion becomes the most important factor in this development. In this religion t common people, the poor and the needy, directly attain a more profound and personal relation to the deity. The believer loses his individual consciousness in enthusiasm and receives the divinity into himself. In moments of orgiastic ecstasy he experiences the ultimate goal of his existence, abiding fellowship with the god, who, as redeemer and savior will free him through death from the finiteness, the suffering, and the exigencies of the earthly life. Orphism sets forth this religious experience in a mystic theology which exerts a strong influence upon Pindar and Empedocles, for example, and which suggested to Plato his magnificent treatise on the dest of the soul.

- According to Posidonius the soul has a heavenly origin. It is an offshoot from the fiery breath of God held captive in the prison-house of the body through birth into the earthly world, but destined for return to its higher home. Only he who in life preserves the divine part from defilement will ascend after death above the lower spheres and rise to the divine source. Our reverence for the starry heaven above us and for the wonders of the cosmos proves the human soul's relation to the heavenly world, and this mystical consciousness of likeness with the divine begets an other-worldly ideal of life.

-Purification and rebirth, mystical union of the believer with the deity and the hope of bliss in the future world, revelation and charismatic endowment which essentially constitute redemption-these are the motives dominating the rites, sacraments, faith, and teaching of this syncretism. As enjoined in the liturgy of the Phrygian mysteries.

- The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures, hope of a life after death…. the soul, conscious of its divine origin, strives for redemption from its foreign and unrelated companion, the body. It seeks deliverance from things sinful, material, and mortal. But the fundamental motive in these various representations is the same; it is longing for elevation above the earthly world and its ruling powers, i.e., for deification. The end of redemption is a life of eternal blessedness. The redeemer is the deity to whose service one devotes his whole life in order to obtain his help and favor.

- But notions and expressions akin to Hellenistic mysticism are already present in, the Pauline doctrine of redemption. Sin is traced back to the flesh and to the natural man. According to Rom. 8:19-22 perishable, degenerate creation looks for deliverance from transitoriness and for the revelation of the sons of God. As the apostle fervently longed for freedom from the body of death (Rom. 7:24), so also redemption is for him deliverance from aiv e'VeCrd, (Gal. 1:4). This leaning toward a "physical" and cosmic extension of redemption is an approach to Hellenistic conceptions. Paul's representa- tion of the believer as living and suffering in Christ, as crucified, buried, and raised with him, recalls the similar way in which the Hellenistic mystery-religions relate the believer to the dead and risen god (Attis, Osiris, Adonis). Thus Paul actually appears to be indebted to Hellenistic mysticism for certain suggestions. As Plato used Orphism, so Paul appropriated forms of expression for his faith from the mysticism of the world to which he preached the gospel.

The relationship of Christianity to Hellenism appears closer in the Ephesian letter. Here Christ is the supreme power of the entire spirit-world, exalting believers above the bondage of the inferior spirits into his upper kingdom (1: 18-22). Christians must struggle with these spirits, among whom the sKoopoipdrope6 (astral spirits) are named. In like manner from the second century on Christ is more frequently extolled as a deliverer from the power of fate.' When Ignatius regards Christ's work as the communication of ryv^oaR and &0c9apria, and the Eucharist as food of immortality, he, like the author of the Fourth Gospel, shows the influence of Greek mysticism. Irenaeus' realistic doctrine of redemption also has, in common with Greek mysticism, the fundamental notions of deification, abolition of death, imperishability, and gnosis.

paarsurrey said:

Does God Make Mistakes?

Well the Hellenist Pauline's god is all set to make mistakes invariably as their Jesus-god and Holy-Ghost-god was never believed by (Jesus) Yeshua- the Israelite Messiah, please, right?

Regards

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I believe that is not right. Paul does not have any business with Helenistic gods other than to refer to their uselessness.